


To Do As The Carrion Does

by kalipersephone



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, And I Am Regretful, Bastardizing Shakespeare, Ben Solo is Angelo, F/M, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Measure for Measure AU, Rey is Isabella, Shakespeare Quotations, Shakespearean Language, Unhappy Ending, shakespeare au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:23:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalipersephone/pseuds/kalipersephone
Summary: Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.Novitiate Rey is left to make an impossible choice when her brother's best friend, Poe, begs her to come back to Vienna and parlay for Finn's life with the new commissioner. Finn's crime is fornication, for which he has been sentenced to die, under a seldom upheld Viennese law. She can save her brother, and reunite him with his pregnant fiancee Rose, but only if she gives in to the seemingly righteous regent's ruinous request.Note: I will be using an ending taken more from Cinthio's Hecatommithi than from Shakespeare's work.





	To Do As The Carrion Does

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Hell! Shakespeare AU! This came to me on a 2,600-mile road trip and it wouldn't fucking leave me alone! Un-Beta'd! Sorry!
> 
> Cast:  
> Duke: Luke Skywalker  
> Escalus: Leia Organa  
> Angelo: Ben Solo

The Duke of Vienna, Luke Skywalker, sighs heavily and steeples his fingers, the force of his elbows on the table rolling some grapes onto the floor. Lady Leia Organa, his sister and second-in-command, refrains from rolling her eyes. She drags the plate of dried meats towards her, Luke squinting unhappily at the accompanying scrape. 

“Lady Organa.”

“My Lord,” she replies dryly. 

Luke leans back in his chair. He interlocks his fingers and rests it on his now-soft stomach, his fingers crushing the velvet in the kind of careless way that has the mother in Leia tsking. Luke only cares about his clothing when he’s wearing it, or a servant is taking it off his body, or putting it on. Leia is more frugal with her fashion. She has to be. 

Lady Organa sips her watered wine, eying her brother over the rim of the glass. He looks up from his hands and winks at her before looking back down. She can see on the arm where a small, shaky hand had once carved “BS” and she can also remember the beating her husband had delivered when he had found out. 

_The son of a tapster cannot roam recklessly and terrorize the home of a Duke!_ His cries and sobs echoed through the halls, and Leia bit her tongue and followed Luke to the larger library, to discuss something that she can no longer remember. Leia had justified her inaction to herself because it was a father’s duty to teach his son about the world, and Han was right; no matter who his mother was, he would always be judged for the sin of having Han Solo as a father. 

The Duke’s gaze has also found the carving. He grumbles. “Of government the properties to unfold, would seem in me to affect speech and discourse.” Leia refrains from rolling her eyes again. Luke inherited the Dukedom from their mother’s family, but of the two of them, she had inherited Padme’s cutting tongue and keen political intellect. Luke’s attentions often laid elsewhere, and it left Leia to govern in his absence, from the shadows. 

“Since I am put to know that your own science exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice my strength can give you: then no more remains, but that to your sufficiency as your worth is able, and let them work. The nature of our people, our city's institutions, and the terms for common justice, you're as pregnant in as art and practise hath enriched any that we remember.” The Duke stands, drains his goblet. Adjusts his doublet. Plasters on a smile. He holds out a hand for his sister, and she takes it. When he squeezes, she squeezes back. Whatever question she has in her eyes, he does not answer. 

Luke’s smile melts from one of artifice to one of reassurance. “There is our commission, from which we would not have you warp.” The Duke claps once, and the attendants stand at attention. Leia’s hand falls, limp, to her lap. “Call hither, I say, bid come before us, Ben Solo.”

An attendant softly opens the door and exits. Leia puts a shaky hand over her mouth. She sent him away for his education, per both her brother and her husband’s advice. According to family tradition. Against the voice inside her screaming to hold her babe to her chest and never let him go. For the first few months, she received letters weekly. The first few, he begged to come home, bluffed about running away, and threatened to fail all his lessons. She looked at his beautiful calligraphy and laughed at how similar to his father he was, her laughter turned to tears as she received letter after letter filled with angry words. Quiet, elegant little curses on the Organa name, the Skywalker name, the Amidala name, but especially the Solos, who he called degenerate scum. 

In the months that followed, his letters dwindled. The last letter he sent asked that she and his father not contact him again, that he was going to make Anakin and Padme proud, but that he would like not to be distracted from his studies. That was six years ago. His last letter before that was two years before. She had not seen him four years hence, and his father even longer. Would she recognize him when he came? Would he recognize her? 

Luke turns to her, excited. “What figure of us think you he will bear?” Leia stands, her chair pushing back with the most awful of noises. Luke barely notices. He gets on one knee and grabs both her hands tightly in his. “For you must know, we have with special soul elected him our absence to supply, lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love, and given his deputation all the organs of our own power.” 

Leia tries to pull her hands from his. She mouths the word _we_ at Luke. His face falls briefly. What he had considered a happy surprise, arranged with the loyal Lords of Vienna to please their fearsome Lady of the Law, and reunite her with her wandering son, may have backfired. Nevertheless, Luke persists. Her son, his nephew, has come home at last. 

“What think you of it?” 

Leia pulls her hands from his and smooths her skirts down, fixes her hair. “If any in Vienna be of worth to undergo such ample grace and honour, it is Lord Solo.”

Luke gestures towards the door, and an attendant begins to open it. “Look where he comes.”

Ben Solo, a boy no more, is staggeringly tall. Much taller than his father. Seemingly as broad as the door. Leia notices, with joy and sadness, that he has the same relentlessly dour look on his face that he had for most of his childhood, with none of the laugh lines his father had by his age. He looks tired and sad. His all-black outfit makes him look like a reaper of Death, and she feels her brother’s mind racing beside her to figure out Ben’s enormous size so he can tell a servant to tell a tailor so something can be left for his favorite nephew in his rooms before Luke’s trip. If not for Ben to wear, at least for Luke to see the look on Ben’s face when he sees the likely garish outfit. 

Ben’s eyes, formerly fixed on the ground in deference, now glance up at his mother. He quickly looks away. 

“Always obedient to your grace's will, I come to know your pleasure,” Ben’s voice is deferential, with a hint of resentment. Leia notices. Luke does not. 

“Ben Solo, there is a kind of character in thy life, that to the observer doth thy history fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.” Leia drinks her son in. His right hand is splattered with ink. His legs are not. Ben took a carriage in, or was able to change clothes before coming to see them. How long will Luke be gone? How long had be been planning this? How long did she have with Ben?

Ben shifts uncomfortably in the entry. 

“Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not.” Luke clasps Ben’s hand in his own and guides him to the chair he himself occupied minutes before. Ben looks to Leia, who takes her seat again, at his right, before he himself sits. Luke holds onto the back of Ben’s chair and continues to speak. Ben grasps at the arms of the chair, his palm engulfing his carving. 

“Spirits are not finely touch'd but to fine issues, nor Nature never lends the smallest scruple of her excellence but, like a thrifty goddess, she determines herself the glory of a creditor, both thanks and use.” The Duke sighs and sits to Ben’s right. He rests his head on his hand and takes in his nephew’s visage. “But I do bend my speech to one that can my part in him advertise.”

Ben opens his mouth to interrupt, to protest, maybe even to agree. _No Uncle, you are a talented Duke! Leadership comes naturally to you, or at least leaving Lady Leia in charge comes naturally to you!_ Lady Leia thinks of her brother’s private library, where he and Ben would spend hours reading old Italian poems, deciphering old Etruscan things, pondering Latin, and wonders if his speech about sharing gifts wouldn’t be better suited to himself, instead of her son, the budding statesmen. Leia, given her position as a woman, and a woman married to _Han Solo_ , does not go beyond her brother’s orders when enforcing the laws of Vienna. The Duke, with his head in his books more oft than not, does not much care for certain laws of Vienna. Now, with the Pope breathing down their necks, and the Papal states succumbing to the plague, Luke has finally decided to listen to Leia’s suggestion. 

Luke puts his hand up. Ben closes his mouth. “Hold therefore, Ben Solo:-- In our remove be thou at full ourself; mortality and mercy in Vienna live in thy tongue and heart. Lady Leia, though first in question, is thy secondary.” Mother and son look at one another. The same eyes, separated by years. The same mouth. The same accusing gaze. The same resentful set of the lower lip. 

Luke stands up, snaps at the attendant. “Take thy commission.” He claps Ben on the shoulder once and turns to leave. Ben stands, panicked. Leia stands, demure. Inside, she seethes. Luke operates on two opposite extremes; extremely rash or surprisingly wise. Ben’s chair skitters behind him, and the Duke winces at the noise. 

“Now, good my lord, let there be some more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamp'd upon it,” but before Ben even finishes his sentence, his Uncle is shaking his head and having a travelling cloak fastened around his shoulders by a young serving boy. The Duke places his hands on each of Ben’s shoulders. 

“No more evasion: we have with a leaven'd and prepared choice proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.” Ben looks to Leia as if to ask _Is this true?_ She lies as she nods back _Yes._ She did not know of her son’s stewardship of her city, but she has never been more proud. “Our haste from hence is of so quick condition that it prefers itself and leaves unquestion'd matters of needful value. We shall write to you, as time and our concernings shall importune, how it goes with us, and do look to know what doth befall you here.” 

Ben looks to the ground, looking more like the boy who left than the man who had come home. Leia thinks Luke feels the same because he shakes Ben like he did when he was a young boy and was fresh off weeping on his father’s knee. Ben looks up at him, eyes hard. 

Luke takes a step back. “So, fare you well; to the hopeful execution do I leave you of your commissions.”

Ben straightens his back. “Yet give leave, my lord, that we may bring you something on the way.”

The Duke comes before Leia and kisses each of her hands, then her cheeks, before picking her up and spinning her around. “My haste may not admit it; nor need you, on mine honour, have to do with any scruple; your scope is as mine own so to enforce or qualify the laws as to your soul seems good.”

Luke looks at Ben, whose face, somehow, has managed to fall further. He grins. “Give me your hand: I'll privily away.” He shakes it vigorously. 

“I love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes: through it do well, I do not relish well their loud applause and Aves vehement; nor do I think the man of safe discretion that does affect it. Once more, fare you well.” Leia remembers the tales they heard of their father, who craved the people’s love and attention, and paid the dearest price for it. 

Ben bows low. “The heavens give safety to your purposes.”

Leia gives Luke one last hug and whispers fiercely in his ear “Lead forth and bring you back in happiness,” implying an _Or else!_

Luke chuckles and kisses her cheek. “I thank you. Fare you well.”

The attendants open both doors for the Duke. He jauntily flips his cape around before leaving the room. They stand until they see him no longer, before Ben collapses heavily in his chair. 

Ben opens his mouth to speak, but Leia is quicker. “I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave to have free speech with you; a power I have, but of what strength and nature I am not yet instructed.” Leia curses herself. 

“'Tis so with me,” Ben muses. He traces his finger over his initials. “Let us withdraw.”

Leia nods and follows him out, one step behind, just a little off, unable to catch up to a stranger whose gait she cannot match, whose measure she can never measure up to, who she has always let down. 


End file.
